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Category Archives: helicopter parents

It started with the car seats and helmets and knee pads –all
good ideas. But we didn’t stop there.

Good intentions mutated into helicopter parents with
drone strike capabilities. Those parents turned the be careful crossing the street message with which our own parents
might have sent us out, into over-the-top caveats of worst-case-scenario endings.
To protect their kids, they stepped in and took control.

From preschool to college, parents are holding on to the
responsibilities their offspring should have begun shouldering years ago. And
the kids are allowing it.

Why not? Parents do
get results. And for the cost of a little bit of freedom, these quasi-adults
get some pretty cushy safety nets, fully equipped with perks like free tuition,
rent, board, cell phones.

Add the millennials’ willingness to trade freedom for protection
to their social media addiction and you might guess where the collision occurs.
We’ve raised some lay-it-all-bare young adults with no problem giving up a
little independence for security. No wonder they’ve expressed zero outrage at
the NSA’s recent shenanigans snooping into the metadata of its own citizens. More
than half of the 18-29 year olds recently surveyed was okay with the government
looking at their phone records in terrorism investigations. While fewer support
the NSA spying on their online activity, they still don’t seem to care that
much about something they should.

Throw a little apathy into the mix and, well, they’re
screwed.

Orwell’s 1984 was supposed to be science fiction. It was
supposed to be a can’t-happen-here, unimaginable dystopia. Hmmm.

A world always at war. A government that spies on its
citizenry. Rewrites of history that fit the party line. Technology as
omnipresent watcher.

None of it is Sci-Fi anymore.

And no one seems to care.

I mind that the parents are acquiescing to a bit of this this privacy invasion, but I kind of get it. But the kids? C’mon!

With nary a shoulder shrug, they are leaving data footprints
that span the globe and they’re being watched in ways Orwell could not have
imagined. From town squares with video cameras at every perch to the online likes
and tweets that offer bold breadcrumb paths that lead directly to their doors,
their privacy is being eroded faster than a Plum Island beach. But rather than
fortifying their foundations, they’re riding the waves, crashing the shore with
abandon.

As one of those over-involved parents, I want to take hold
of their collective shoulders and give them a good shake. I want to light a
fire of caution signs, tread with care, watch out!

But I don’t know what they’ll hear, or if they’ll listen.

I love the welcome-to-college life course I teach at my little college. Not so
much for my ability to guide students into this next phase of their lives;
they’d get there without my help. But rather for the perspective it gives me on
who these young people are and what they believe and what they think is
important. The view is often scary dark.

On the other hand, on rare occasion, it’s enlightening.

With the carrot of extra-credit, I encouraged my students
to choose a Rock the Vote assembly for one of their mandatory campus
participation events. Only a few took me up on it. However, one went, got the
point, and actually registered to vote.

How cool.

So I won’t scream at hordes of young people, or lecture
to the masses on why they should be standing up for themselves and saying no to
governmental (and parental) intrusion into their lives. I won’t take up
the banner they should be hoisting on their own. Rather, I’ll try to get to
know a few of them and talk to them –and listen.

And maybe as they teach me a little bit about who they
are, I can teach them why some of the identity they’re so willing to share deserves
to stay private.

Shouldering responsibility even when it may not be fully mine to carry (see previous post) may seem a throwback to an earlier and wrong-minded blame-the-victim philosophy. In some ways, maybe it is. The mindset, however, could be a generational thing. My parents, my peers and I have generally held to the belief that we are fully the authors of our own lives. Responsibility, ownership –these are the beacons to which most of us charted our courses.

It’s an admirable ideal. The flip side of it, though, may be that in addition to accepting our own failings, we sometimes take on the failings of others –especially our offspring. A dangerous habit. Certainly the practice has the potential to be difficult for us, but its cost to our kids may be much more damning.

Because we’ve allowed it, too many of our children are quick to place blame outside their own sphere. The trajectory may start at home but it follows them out and up into the world. It’s the teacher, the coach, the professor, the boss. Not them.

This it’s-everyone-else’s-fault mantra sets them on course to an unsustainable climb. Eventually they may find themselves at a precipice without a parachute. And the climb down from such inflated heights can be treacherous, a fall disastrous.

But it’s our fault.

Hmmm

I once opined in a newspaper column that we spend the first years of our children’s lives placing them at the center of the universe and then are shocked when they turn into teenagers and start to agree with the positioning.

This isn’t to say that our kids aren’t wonderful.

They are. They have so much to offer. All of them.

They’re just not all wonderful at everything.

And when we pretend that they are, and then they fail, it’s pretty easy for them to grab to a life ring of blame; it just has to be the fault of someone else. Because we’ve told them too many times -they’re wonderful.

The thing is, just like we probably learned a whole lot more from our missteps than from any of our easier accomplishments, our kids would likewise benefit from the occasional reality check. After all, how exactly are they to identify success if they’ve never considered failure?

My own kids have stumbled on occasion. I’ve had opportunities to step in to soften the blows. A phone call, a small intervention, a push in an alternate direction might have changed the outcome, averted a full-out failure. It was hard to watch my kids hurt, difficult to resist the temptation to intervene. Usually, I did it anyway. It’s too early to tell if it was the right decision.

Michael will soon to be out of high school. His road has been a much different one than his sister’s. From an outside perspective, it may appear that he’s suffered more failures. But not necessarily. His choices, as misguided as they sometimes appear, have been his own. If he hasn’t exactly excelled at an endeavor, it’s usually entirely of his own choosing. Seriously.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t seen Michael brush blame from his own shoulders and onto another’s. He’s hardly perfect. On the other hand, he usually acknowledges his shortcomings, owns up to many of his mistakes.

Michael is off on an alternative journey and passionately so. His climb has been a whole lot rockier than those of his peers but he knows every inch of the terrain. And because he’s forged such a unique path, when he does stumble –as he will- he may be better prepared to pick himself up, reassess his direction and continue on.

Their barriers are better fortified so the floods are less frequent. It may also be that, stuck on an unbreaking weather front for so long, I now miss the nuances of atmospheric change that could predict an impending deluge. The monotony of the climate has impaired my instincts for meteorological shift.

Still, when stars and clouds align, I can sometimes become receptacle to a warm and pleasant shower of conversation from my children. Even Michael.

Alex has always been more the flash flood sort. Her sharing comes in loud bursts of information, full of pelting details. There’s immediacy and urgency. Pay attention and take cover. I can’t always be sure what’s coming, but I’ve learned to ride out the storms; they usually don’t last long.

Until the year he stopped talking (to me), Michael’s showers were constant and consistent. Like those sleep aid sound boxes that generate rainforest background noise. I could predict their content and clutter. There wasn’t much I needed to do to inspire the rains; little I could do to forestall them.

He and I have been in a drought for awhile, though. I rarely feel the pulse of quenching wet weather.

But pulled away from the stresses of his life, Michael can sometimes fall to old weather patterns. I can’t change the storm’s path or direct its flow. In fact, the wrong questions from me can dry up the conversation entirely. If I’m careful, though, I can listen, bask in the cooling waters, and learn.

Back from Boy Scout camp, and trapped in the car with me for over an hour, Michael could have settled into sleep as he often does. And he did. But not until he shared stories of his adventures –for nearly half the trip.

Similar results from the sound recording camp he attended at Salem State University. His enthusiasm –and words- spilled over and out and onto me. And it wasn’t just a soaking of what-he-did, but more pleasing to me was that the conversation included plans of what-he-could-do, who-he-could-be.

Because in the tumult of the rains, there’s nothing better to see than glimmers of light, a bit of sun.

It seems that every week there’s another sighting. Another roving bandit making his not-so-stealthily way through city and suburban neighborhoods across the country. They’re pulling at birdfeeders, scurrying through yards, perching themselves up in backyard trees.

According to the Massachusetts Environmental Police, this is the time of year when the mama bear kicks the kids out and sends them into the world. Those baby bears are supposed to find their own territory, start their adult lives.

But that not-so-little guy with the dumb-eyed look hanging in an Attleboro tree last week, I’ll guess he’s a boy. A teenager, for sure. And the thought bubble above his head in less-than-articulate fashion probably reads: What? Where? Vinnie Babarino in a bear’s cloak.

That’s not to say I don’t think the boys are smart. On the contrary, they are. That’s what makes their life delays so damn frustrating. I think Michael has actually devised a mathematical algorithm to compute the absolute minimum effort required to get by in certain areas of his life. And he’s not alone. I’ve had some pretty in-depth conversations with a few of his friends. In a foggy, fast-forward scenario, I can even picture them as adults. Responsible, good men.

But now, they’re just baby bears, a bit wild, somewhat misguided, and roving.

And like the bears popping up in places they’re not supposed to be, many of the boys I know are taking the most circuitous routes possible to get to god-only-knows where they’re going. I don’t. And I don’t think they do, either.

But back to the bears.

All those mama bears in the woods are pushing their kids out into the world. Our world. They’ve taught them well, I’m sure. And they probably know that the girls have paid heed, will likely do just fine. But I bet mama bear also knows full-well that her baby boy isn’t quite ready for the world. Judging from the overblown reaction he gets every time he makes a backyard forage, the world isn’t ready for him either.

Mama doesn’t seem to care. Ready-or-not, she pushed him out anyway.

Too bad we humans don’t do likewise.

Instead of following the rules of nature, we’re bucking the intended order of things. It seems that all those helicopter parents created a rash of boomerang babies. The kids often go off and out. But then they come back.

And in true 21st century fashion, rather than remedy our missteps with action, we’re reacting with talk. There are websites, blogs, discussion forums, all themed around adult-children-living-with-parents.

All to tell us, we’re not alone.

That’s part of the problem. Because when we’re assured that we’re not the only ones, it lends normalcy to the trend.

I know of so many really good parents who’ve gotten themselves in this too-many-adults-under-one-roof predicament.

Reminds me of the guy interviewed on television after something horrible happens in his neighborhood, saying if it can happen here.

It can happen anywhere.

Unless maybe we follow the bears. And the birds, for that matter. The nest above our back porch light is a-chatter with chaotic chirping in the spring. Long before summer ends, though, it’s pleasantly silent.

Michael’s only 17. But on days when he’s performing solo drum concerts for hours-on-end, I sometimes wonder what silence emanating from his playroom nest might sound like. And if I’ll ever hear it.